


Why She Stays

by firecat



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Hans Christian Andersen references, Mermaids, Ocean, Pirates, Sailing, Souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27022279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: A mermaid lives on a sailing ship with a retired pirate.
Relationships: Mermaid/Retired Pirate
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	Why She Stays

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Froday 100th special, prompts (90) pirate, (43) mermaid

The mermaid sat on the deck of the ship, combing her long, glossy hair.

She liked the way her hair looked and felt when it was dry. She liked how the breeze stirred it. And since it was a sailing ship, there was always a breeze.

The retired pirate sat with his hand on the tiller. His ravaged old face looked as weatherbeaten as the crags near the place where she was born.

He had no crew any more. The pieces of eight in his treasure chest dwindled. He had enough to pay for the sorts of supplies a seaman might need. Hardtack. Fresh water. Oil for the lamps and the cook stove. Sometimes a little grog. 

She supplied the fish, fresher than that available to any landed king.

They’d been together for years, although you wouldn’t know it, because his body aged, as all human bodies do. Hers didn’t. Merpeople don’t age. They just, one day, turn to seafoam.

Why would she stay with him? anyone who saw them together might wonder. What does he have to offer a beautiful, magical creature such as herself?

A few might speculate: a soul. 

A writer asserted it once: if a human man should marry a mermaid, “then his soul would glide into her body, and she would obtain a share in the future happiness of mankind.” She would “rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see."

The writer got it wrong. A soul is not the part of him that enters her, or the gift he leaves behind when he’s finished entering her.

She doesn’t stay for the soul, or the sex (enjoyable as it is), or the seed, though. 

Who wants to go to heaven? She’d rather turn into sea foam, when her time has come. 

She stays because it’s her home now, this hollow container made of wood, wandering on the restless sea.

**Author's Note:**

> Quoted passages from [Project Gutenberg's _Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales_ edited by J.H. Stickney](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32572/32572-h/32572-h.htm), specifically "The Little Mermaid"


End file.
